Moscow II

As the pictures so far may suggest, we don't normally put a whole lot of effort into our appearance when we are on holidays. This morning however, we dressed semi-respectably, did our hair and even packed our 'going-out' shoes into our daybag. We had plans for a grand Moscow experience in the evening and wanted to look the part. Note here, as it will come up again later, we didn't particularly want to carry our day bag and so checked it in to luggage storage first thing in the day.

We had a whole day worth of Moscow to see first though, and we started off at the other side of the Red Square at the entry to the Kremlin. Moscow does many things differently to other cities of the world, even to St Petersburg. They like to charge alot of money for item such as clothes and yet are very reasonable with prices in restuarants. They like to spend the evenings drinking in the streets as opposed to a friend's place or bar or club and they like to erect large, huge statues and memorials absolutely everywhere. We ask Galina why it is so and her proud face lights up, her shoulders stand upright and then with a shrug of her shoulders she tries to look casual in saying "Becasue it's Moscow". The Kremlin is one such unique oddity that could only exist in Moscow. This is no simple Paraliament House. Surrounded by the old city walls with 5 watch-towers supporting the 5-pointed Red Star the Kremlin is a series of bulidings with mulitple purposes including residences, the State Palace, Secret Gardens, lots of police guarding everything, flags that when raised mean different things and an entire courtyard dedicated to churches, 2 of which are Cathedrals.

Unfortunately there was nowhere to buy coffee, but we bravely soldiered on in the heat as we finished with the Kremlin and walked over to the golden spires in the distance, that after 4 weeks of Europe we could knowledgeably identify as an 'important' Church. It turned out to be so - a Chuch of Russian Orthodox extraction destroyed during the Soviet period and recently rebuilt. Luckily, we were both wearing modest clothing (completely by accident) and were allowed in to view the inside.

It was then onto lunch where the phrase "because its Moscow" took on frustrating overtones as we waited two hours for food that wasn't what we ordered and then for the bill that again didn't mirror what we had ordered. Again our trusty leader Galina was worth her weight in gold being the only one amongst us who could spek Russian and sort out the mess. From here we were very eager to get out again into the city and explore some more.

We trekked in the heat to the Sculpture Park - Park Skulptur, a collection of Soviet Statues put to pasture when they were ripped from their pedestals in the post-1991 wave of Soviet feeling as recommended by Lonely Planet. We arrived to view these moody discredited icons of Stalin, Lenins and Brezhnevs at the most untimely time. We had only an hour till 6pm. D-time for our checked in luggage, namely our going-out shoes!

We jumped onto the metro, battling peak-hour crowds, and even ran to where the luggage check point was. Or should have been. We checked the map and we were standing at the exact point that we had circled to remind us where we had left our belongings outside the entrance to the Kremlin. Mysteriously the room had disappeared. Time check, it was 6:10pm. Defeated we gave up and decided to walk around for half an hour and drown our sorrows with ice cream. It was then completely by accident we found that the luggage room had not relocated, the Kremlin had two back to back entrances that were reflected to look identical and we were simply standing on the wrong side. Yay! We had shoes. Now for the event we were all waiting for...

The Russian Ballet!!! At the Bolshoi Theatre no less (although technically we were in the building next to the Bolshoi because of pesky renovations). However there was everything two Ballet conniseurs could ask for: dancing, leaping, twirling, pointed toes, muscular men and flexible ladies. Because we had bought tickets without actually knowing which performance we were seeing (the whole cyrillic alphabet thing again) and expecting a more traditional swan lake type show, we were pleasantly surprised and riveted by a storyline based on the exciting French revolution. And yes, we later learned that the show was called 'The flames of Paris'.

Pumped up by the ballet, we headed into town for dinner stopping briefly at souvenir stalls allowing for Megan to purchase a soviet hat for photos outside the Red Square. Along the way we passed and the now-familiar bands playing in the subway, while Russian police looked on impassively and beer-drinking crowds formed around the different bands. It was a saturday night in Moscow and more people seemed to be out on the streets than in any of the bars and restaurants. We were hurried through our post-ballet meal by restaurant staff who wanted to close up and head out themselves so we skillfully jumped from line to line on the metro and then bravely, a combination of both neccesity and peer pressure, packed a taxi with 6 people and went for a roller-coaster ride down the hectic streets to our hotel. We felt high and mighty as we finished the night with our group in the hotel bar sharing drinks, chips and, most importantly, chocolate.